Cracking the World's Shell: A Drabble Collection
by mentalyoga
Summary: A collection of drabbles [stories of 600 words or less] covering a variety of themes and emotions. Much darkness and angst and sex and lies ensue. They have been previously posted in the utenadrabble livejournal community.
1. Chapter 1

**Cracking the World's Shell: A Collection of Drabbles**

_One_

mentalyoga

* * *

**Altar**

The arena looms menacingly before her. It is a vacant infinity with all the possibilities of eternity and miracles and shining things trying desperately to fill the void; ethereal, translucent. She tries, for just a moment, to reach out a hand and brush her fingertips against one, but like they once had in her time here, they vanish the moment they are within reach. She didn't expect anything else.

Her footsteps shatter the silence that lingers; she is almost startled, but continues. Does she remember where it fell? Can she find the exact spot where it broke into a million tiny, repressed fragments against the smooth pavement? Yes. She picks it out as if the spot in and of itself has held more of a place in her heart all these years than the feelings that accompanied it. She does not kneel before it. Perhaps those many years ago, she would have, as though it were an altar; she might have prayed to it, hoping with all of her cynical heart that some glimmer of a miracle would fall from the Castle and whisk her away from the harsh realities of life. Not now. She knows now that Ohtori was only an illusion of life. And even though sometimes the locket fleetingly crosses the wild tangles of her mind, the pain lasts only momentarily. Time has softened her; she is sensitive, but not angry.

Miracles, she's found, do not exist. It doesn't harden her heart as it once did, however. Miracles live on in the minds of the naïve, for their own existence cannot be validated without some way out of the icy reality of the outside world. Juri has no need for escapism; she looks at the world as it is, and accepts it as such.

Ohtori will not claim her any longer. The locket will not claim her anymore. Footsteps startle her once again. Are they her own?

"Juri," comes the slithering, bitter voice. The dam breaks, and the memories rush through in bursts, attacking and consuming her with a vicious greed and starved fury. The voice rams against her over and over, raping her with sadistic malice.

In her pain, she looks up to the Castle, and waits for this Miracle to end.

* * *

**the Conquest**

The paths down the mountain had all but worn themselves out; a mere trail of dried grass was the only hint that humans had ever risked forging through the dense greenery. And it was logical, she mused, wincing as the thorns tore at her alabaster flesh hungrily, unveiling thin sheets of beautiful crimson blossoms across the soft, pale surface. "Yes," she thought, as her ankles braved the covered gaps in the path just waiting to consume them, "only someone as crazy as I am would call this mountain's bluff."

In the latest bit of evening–almost dusting the edge of morning–she could hear the shore undulating in the distance; the gentle waves beckoned to her thirsting soul. Sometimes, though, she wondered if perhaps it were only a vicious Siren, hunting for the blood that rushed through the thin, meandering roads of her veins.

But if this mountain would just let her go–free her from this endless torment–she would return...

At nights she dreamed–rarely, for her nights were hardly peaceful–of the cocoa skin that tasted so sweet to her tongue, the lust that hastened at her touch, the eternal indigo waves cascading onto her face from above. But the face…she could not recall the face; it had become but a distant star in the overpopulated, twinkling horizon.

It was this that troubled her rest the most–where had the face disappeared to? Of all things to be stolen, why had the mountain taken this memory–this divine ambrosia–from her?

She would overcome this mountain–if only to find this face once more. She was determined to find the footpaths that awaited her below. There would lie the memory of Her face; and perhaps further on, there She would be waiting, to take Utena back into her all-nurturing embrace.

* * *

**Cruel**

She wears her hair free, and the ringlets cascade down upon her bared back as though she is some wild Greek goddess. Innocence is easy to feign, and she has played it well for a thousand thousand years. Her lips are painted the deepest crimson, and brush his skin delicately, with the whispers of five-hundred harem-women. Her own matching dark skin tastes of caramel, of cocoa, and is smoother than the thinnest rice paper, softer than the most elegant of hand-woven silks.

She would stab the blade through the fleshy meat of his chest, through to his slowly-beating heart while whispering sweet nothings in his ear, if only she could find the golden opportunity. Tingles shock her spine when she thinks of the possibilities; the visions of the dark red of the pool spreading swiftly, the thoughts of licking the wound clean, the power of towering--in all of her nude glory--above him triumphantly. But then, she wonders, could it have any effect at all? Perhaps she will stab through only to find that where there should be a heart, there is only a beating, breathing chasm, waiting to engulf the blade and drain her of all her resolve.

Sometimes, she questions the origin of these thoughts--but then quickly realizes that there is never a reason. There does not need to be a reason; she is cruel. Her cruelty hangs low, bat-like, in every particle of her being; perhaps one could say it was of the womb created from her tainted martyrdom, but it is of little relevance. She will always dream of his demise, of wiping the blood from her ever-scarlet lips. Maybe, indeed, it is she with the chasm for a heart.

* * *

**averaging**

He had always known it would end up like this.

A nameless man thrust above him--Mr. So-and-So, Miki called him--groaning into his ear, his breath hot and wet and sticky. Miki turned his face, and he just felt like vomiting.

They had met at some party–held by some other So-and-So, who was just _such_ a wonderful host–or maybe it was at some gallery, where So-and-So was the featured artist–or was it at some café, where they had coincidentally ordered the same precisely prepared frappuccino? Miki couldn't recall, and Mr. So-and-So's moans were becoming fervent; Miki feared the worst was about to happen.

Maybe it wouldn't have come to this, had He noticed Miki only once. He was just a different So-and-So, they told Miki, but it was moot–Miki wanted this So-and-So, and this one alone. But Miki played the Invisible Man all too often, because maybe his art just wasn't artistic enough, or his piano skills not refined enough, or his boyish good looks not quite boyish enough. It was never enough.

It wasn't the first time. Miki recalled the So-and-Sos back at that dreaded Academy–the innumerable men who could never have seen Miki's eyes darting over at them beneath his heavy, soot-covered lashes. Miki recalled all of the midnights he spent dabbing tissues at average tears beneath his pillow, wishing that he really were invisible, so that he wouldn't ever have to concern himself with pretending to be invisible.

And so Miki went to So-and-So's party, or his gallery, or the café, and there was Mr. So-and-So, and he noticed Miki, hiding out behind a cerulean mane. And Miki so needed to be noticed; he needed, more than anything, to be acknowledged as a whole human being, as someone worthwhile.

And so Mr. So-and-So took Miki back to his nondescript apartment, and gave Miki some average drink–maybe it was bourbon, or a gin-and-tonic–and drew Miki's petite form into his average-sized bed, where, according to Mr. So-and-So, they couldn't both fit unless Mr. So-and-So got on top of Miki. Miki agreed, because it was an average day, and he had nothing better to do, and because Mr. So-and-So had noticed him at the right time, in the right place (wherever it was), when he was feeling generally worthless.

And so it went. Mr. So-and-So came with a heave, and fell upon Miki, his sweat-covered body sliding slippery across Miki's small frame, and Miki wanted nothing more than to go back to his home and bathe for several unnoticeable and average hours. But unfortunately, he couldn't move with Mr. So-and-So's weight anchoring him down. A few minutes later, Mr. So-and-So began to snore, and Miki realized he was going nowhere fast.

Yes, Miki had always known it would be just like this.

* * *

**She Waits**

Her eyes rot behind her charcoal lashes; like overripe plums, in their decay, they glisten with the juice of the inattention and torments they suffered in life.

Love. Love is, she believes, simply a synonym for manipulation, for greed, for abuse, for domination. Her brother "loves" her for the wealth of power hiding beneath her breast, he "loves" her for the Pandora's Box she keeps hidden away behind the black lace panties he told her to wear when he fucks her.

The duelists "love" her for her unspoken promises; her rotting eyes reflect the deepest, darkest desires concealed within their stopwatches, their lockets, their wicked, wicked ways.

And the Prince "loves" her because she is the Princess, the Bride. An arranged marriage must bear fruit; her womb may be barren, but her power is limitless. The Prince will call forth her fruit until he is pronounced King.

And for this, her eyes lie within their sockets, dead and awaiting resurrection. But no savior comes, for Witches--especially those who once were good--have no real emotions; they are corpses wiling away time until the coming of the End.

She waits for the succulent sweetness of the End. Always, she waits.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

**Cracking the World's Shell: A Drabble Collection**  
_Two_  
mentalyoga

(A/N: This chapter's a collection of Juri-centric ones.)

* * *

**Rainfall**

The sky has been clouded and gray every day for nearly a month, threatening the land below with rumbling thunder and sparse sprays of wetness, as if warning that soon it will break free of its shell and bring forth a flood of epic proportions. But it does not. The vengeance it dangles, taunting, is trapped in its lonely atmospheric cage, conjuring a façade of strength each morning that dissipates by dusk, not realizing all the time that one day it will die off, as all things do eventually. The sun will conquer it like a tyrant, throwing it to its private devils in the void that is not known unless it is visible.

Juri wants to reach out with her delicate and fleshy ivory fingertips and run them along the clouds gently, reassuringly. She wants it to know that others live, as hollow scarecrows of themselves, in the cage with it and that they are simply hiding away until their hearts are sufficiently impenetrable. She tucks her pain away in a locket—her pain being, of course, the woman-child that has broken her down. She would offer the sky a locket if she thought that the spaced atoms in the stratosphere could sustain the weight. Sometimes, she does not feel as if she can bear the weight of her own locket—her gilded Scarlet Letter—but her atoms are close-knit and strong, and she has no excuse.

Each day the sky threatens rain, she sees the woman-child striding about with an unnecessarily large umbrella, mainly because the woman-child does not believe in spontaneity. She does not believe in living. She prepares for the worst, and when the worst hits, prides herself on her cleverness. If nothing happens, she simply stows her umbrella away in a hidden place and acts as though it had never existed.

See, but they have that much in common. Cynicism is a strong bond in hard times. But the woman-child does not empathize with the sky; she protects herself against the pain it exudes, not wishing to taint her own happiness with the knowledge of its discontent. Juri should strike her for her selfishness, but steadies her hand with the patience of one much accustomed to restraint.

She and the cloudy sky can exist in solitude, retreating to their warm corner of the cage, away from the others. It is a well-known fact among the cage-dwellers that the others would side with the tyrannical sun if they thought it beneficial. The sky believes in resolution and Juri honors conviction. If she steadies her hand often enough, perhaps the woman-child will take it in her own, and she will finally shatter the locket.

* * *

**a glance**

It was only a glance. A mere turn of the eyes in a seemingly random direction, plum-stained irises taking in the scenery.

But it was enough.

Her heart had never stumbled; she was Ice Queen Extraordinaire. Feelings were left to silly girls and to the weak. Maybe Miki cried in his room as he fell to sleep at night, dreaming of arpeggios and of shining things, maybe Nanami cried when she wasn't invited to some inane soiree, maybe even Touga cried, but who could say what it was he would be vulnerable to? Juri did not cry. Juri did not feel.

But that glance–that simple act of human sensory perception–had something within her sobbing like a child. Not that anyone could see, past her fortified veneer of indifference.

She found the locket several weeks later, a hidden treasure spying out at her behind reference books in a secluded corner of the library. It's beauty lay in its facades. A pretty rose decorated the faux-gold surface of the locket. But what was almost indistinguishable was the fact that behind the rose, any number of secrets could be held. It took Juri several days of wearing the locket to realize that it opened, a veritable Pandora's Box waiting to unleash the Apocalypse.

She placed the yearbook picture of Her inside the locket, so that when she opened it, she could find that glance waiting for her for all of eternity. Yes, it was a sideways glance–Juri does not remember what She was looking at, and it was irrelevant, besides–but forever, and forever, Juri had captured the only feeling she had ever known.

It wasn't a particularly pleasant feeling, but Juri knew that, with this feeling, somewhere inside the shell of her body, there was a soul.

* * *

**White Sheets**

Her skin was smooth and tasteless, and Juri felt bland and meaningless running her tongue across it. They both realized that this was no emotional affair; it was devoid of any carnal impulses and they were driven by a need that far outran any primal instinct. Juri took the girl's breast in her palm (they were dainty enough to fit) like the bud on a flower, firm but yearning for the caress of a hand, no matter how uncaring it was. In the bed lined with sterile white sheets, she crushed the girl's heart as easily as a rose petal; she was unflinching and she liked to imagine that the girl liked being crushed on a very basic and masochistic impulse.

For her part, the girl made no protest to the degradation. She had compulsively scrubbed the sheets to their pristine state in some wild hysteria only this morning, and she was submitting completely to the leopard's pounce. If she submitted completely, then she had taken no part in the matter. She was as pure as the sheets.

"This changes nothing," the leopard growled, muffled by the sheet the girl had laid over her head.

The girl's silence was enough an answer to her statement. A vaguely eerie stillness settled over them like dust as they lay in the bed, knowing that they had turned to one another out of a humiliating desperation. Despite any protests or denial to the contrary, Juri could not put out of mind the fact that as they writhed as calculating as snakes between the sheets, she had not once removed the locket from about her chest. In the girl's mind, she had imagined his dark-skinned body above her, controlling her as he controlled that vicious and repulsive sister of his.

There were no illusions of love or lust in their sordid romp. Escapism, they knew, was the only motivation and that they, like all dwellers of Ohtori, were merely covering up their dubious flaws with thorny branches and wilting rose petals. It was of no consequence, and in the tiny moment when their two worlds met and collapsed or imploded or exploded or whatever it was they did, there was no chain holding them down to their respective steel balls (of miracles or of need), and there was no shell blocking their sky view. There was only the Prince, claiming their small dreams as his own so that he could project them upon the Ohtori captives forever and forever.

Finally, Kanae rose. The sheets needed cleaning.

* * *

**Drugged**

Juri swallows the pills with a rigid, dictatorial determination. They cluster in her throat, scratching the tender pink surface of her esophagus, and she nearly gags on them right off the bat. That wouldn't be any good. You see, she needs these pills to wash away the pain inside her gut; in go the little cylindrical mind-numbers, and the hurt inside makes an unnoticeable exit, only to return when the happy hallucinations grow tired and doze off. It is then that the gold chain encircling her slender swan's neck begins to tighten and choke, drawing the vitality and pride inside of the golden cage that lies on the sharp edges of her collarbone.

But the pills, at least for the time being, erase the memories of her shining violet irises, glistening with the sadomasochistic glee of a suicide bomber, for she is willing to bring harm unto herself in order to chip away at the glass hearts of others. They erase the visions of her younger self, blinded by naïve love for the Girl, being thrown to the side for the boy-of-the-week. They loosen the chain and lighten the locket, and Juri knows—despite the veil the pills draw across Juri's conscience—that without them, she would be caught once more in the cage where miracles slip just out of reach as soon as she desires them.

Without them, she yearns for miracles that she knows do not exist. Beneath the veil of hopes, she can lead the life of one who knows miracles intimately. When the Universe exploded into existence, and Akio created his shining dollhouse and the eyeless, soulless puppets, somehow, Juri had missed out on the privilege and been made with the undying curse of sight and of self-awareness. Hiding within the illusions the pills give her, however, she can find a safe haven in a false life, as the other Ohtori prisoners have done for all of eternity.

* * *

**Crushed Pearls**

The noon light gleamed off of the fencing sword, blinding in its intensity. It was always noon and always sunny in the Arena. This was because it did not rain in the Arena; the rain, instead, was confined to the hearts of the duelists that dared to step foot inside. And for a moment, it was this ever-dependable light that was her Achilles heel, and she couldn't see as her opponent flicked her wrist, sliding the rose from her lapel. But like a mother bird, she claimed the rose gently, firmly. The petals were intact when it collapsed upon the cement. They both grinned.

"Another decent match, Tenjou, but I might have to look for a new sparring partner if you insist on losing all the time." Juri applied a light coat of gloss to her already moist lips as she

"If it were up to me, you know I'd have you and that damned flower on the ground in two seconds," Utena joked bitterly, letting her gaze linger a bit too long on the woman's pursed lips, before quickly looking to the waiting gates.

"Whatever happened to that Prince of yours, the one that won all the duels for you? He abandon you?" she inquired, rubbing her lips together to spread the wet substance evenly.

Utena blushed lightly. "Not so much that, but it…it's complicated."

Juri met her faltering glances with a stern one. "Men. Who needs them?" She began to undo the buttons on her jacket with deft fingers. She was accustomed to removing clothes in a hurry—modeling had its benefits, she supposed.

Utena felt a flush rising from her breast up her throat up her cheeks up her forehead upupupupup. "Er…Juri…?"

The bold woman laughed; but it was a shrewd, weary one. "Don't mistake my intentions here, Tenjou. You aren't my type. I have a tee shirt underneath this. It's just damn hot up here." She surveyed the naïve girl's boyish frame. "I like my women meatier than you are, kid."

Utena cleared her throat nervously, "Well, now that we have that cleared up—"

"This can continue just as it was, a blossoming companionship," Juri finished, "Besides, you know I'm hung up on someone else." She made a nonchalant grab at the locket; it was habitual, ingrained deeply within her psyche. Utena ignored the move, as you would politely overlook a particularly unpleasant sneeze or belch, noting instead the way that Juri's green-blue eyes reminded her somehow of crushed pearls, hard, but precious and beautiful—vulnerable—at the same time.

Dusk began to settle, dust-like, upon the Arena. Utena led Juri down the marble stairs; this would all disappear if they stayed any longer, vanish like the illusions that had invaded every crevice of Ohtori with the loss of the sunlight.

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

**Cracking the World's Shell**  
_Three_  
mentalyoga

_(A/N: These were a series of challenges on the utenadrabble livejournal community.)_

* * *

**The Compromise**

"It might take a bit of convincing on your part," he cooed, a sly smile staining his red, red mouth.

"What sort," replied his spring-haired rival/companion skittishly, "of convincing?" It was a simple question, really, but a bit silly in hindsight. He knew what kind of convincing Kiryuu might be interested in; what garnered the challenge, then, was that the two boys—despite whispers to the contrary—had never quite compromised on this matter. But Kiryuu shook his head.

No words. Not any more—they had crossed the threshold of the spoken into the nebulous slate grays of silence. Now everything must be expressed in tactile gestures, caresses and snatches of skin, viciously sharp nails shredding flesh, and gashes opening and closing for the taboos that might now be voiced in this freeing silence.

There was a muted gasp—but from which boy?—as fleshy hands took hold of long hair—but whose?—and pressed desperately downward. Everything so desperate now—the speechless grunts, the unspoken moans, the first gag. This was not the desperation of most boys; this was the frantic search for the Other. For how could they define themselves, but in opposition to their enemy/lover? Back to the task at hand.

Gasp.

Yes, that bubble-gum cunt would relinquish her power now.

Grunt.

The Bride would be purified.

Gasp.

It all would be set right.

Grunt.

Everything went all wet for a wandering moment. Touga rose from his kneeling position, wiping the corner of his lip with a casual index finger.

"We'll begin your training tomorrow. We'll have no more of this…girl playing prince." Nothing but a flaccid dick and a panting half-child lay in his wake. The convincing wasn't the hardest part, after all.

* * *

**The Fertilizer Princess**

_Kanae, why dontcha let down all that hair let it down let it down. A field of green, a wedding ring, and the blinded knight without a grasp on the tower walls._

The prince down here is drowning; the flood of his illusions finally washed out the dams. But the funny this is, these dams had been constructed in shapes something like automobiles—there! can you see the gear shift, a steering wheel, a chunk of bubble-gum pink hair? The fact of the matter was that they had broken. You see, the myth, the illusion, grew too big for the boy, and his britches fell down around his ankles and the townsfolk had clambered all around his shrunken prick, begging for a lick or a chunk of his wine-dark skin. They thought they could ingest his strength, but they were unaware that the dam-cars had driven off in a flurry of lockets and metronomes, which had been used to tuck things away and to keep them in strict meter. Now, of course, chaos had fallen down in a cacophony of atonal notes, a shower of secret photos. And all that rose hair braided tight against the violet, how it lined the dust-tracks in the roads!

But these common folk wanted to ingest his power (perhaps through his semen, didn't that New Guinea tribe eat up all their strength through hot white loads?) but they didn't know that the dams had broken, that the princesses had up and transfigured themselves. The townsfolk had never driven cars before; they were too poor, you see. That ol' class disparity, as it were. But they didn't know this. They didn't really know much of anything at all.

And so he begged his dead wife to tug him up the walls of her tower, pleaded for the death he had himself given her (he was a veritable Azrael, if you will). But she had since left the tower, she had been playing fertilizer for the rose beds high up above the stone tower for six, seven months. She did not know this—her role—and she certainly did not hear his childlike chant.

_Kanae, o Kanae wontcha let down your sweet hair? I'm dying, I'm dying, I've done died down here._

For fertilizer has no ears, not since the soil filled its/her lobes with worms, and if it/she has no ears then it/she has no heart, for the desperate pleas of its/her dark Judas no longer reach it/her. In this light, in the meterless, ripped open reality left in the wake of tire tread and burning fuel, the townsfolk ingest him, indeed. Not just his useless prick, but his slick slick hair, his eye-gems and dead eye-pits—from his toes to his head!

And the emerald princess, fertilizer that she is, hears none of it.

* * *

**Moth Dust**

He smelled of cabbages and semen and had her white sheets tangled up in his thick thighs, somehow seeming more naked with that strip of cloth than he would have without it.

She was emerging from a shower and toweling moth-dust from her shoulder-blades and was utterly unsurprised to find a strange man lying bare in her bed.

"What, I blackout last night or somethin'?" She wrapped the rose-petal red towel tight around her forehead. Her breasts hung unburdened, and she walked with legs slightly spread, as if inviting him to close them himself. And with the towel around her head, she looked like a (strangely familiar) turbaned Indian woman, the opening of her nether regions a thin sheath.

Answering her question with another, the fiery man in the bed inquired: "Whatever do you mean?" He turned to a painting on the wall, where there hung a (strangely familiar) girl with a gash where her heart should have been—perhaps to match the red gash that opened between her legs. "Not as black as she, eh?"

Questions. Shiori did not like this one, did not like the idea of this milk-chocolate woman fading to black when she should have been bright with life. "No one's really black. Not in that sense."

"Oh, but isn't she? Have you ever met a girl with an illusory heart?" He saw that she had not. "Aren't you a shameful girl, fucking indiscriminately in this bed without even an idea of the black girl that's been watching all the time?" He removed the white, white sheets. Night fell. Blackness welled up in pools along the corners of the room.

"Come," he ordered. No more questions. "I'll teach you to respect the soulless. Cover the paintings and remove that towel. I want to see you fly tonight."

She had to be on top, so as to avoid crushing the moth-wings, but for some reason, she didn't feel at all in control. He fucked her without a light to guide them, and that blackest-of-black girl watched them in the black, black darkness of the covered room.

* * *

**The Offering**

A shrill, silvery soprano rang throughout the rose garden. "To grandmother's house we go…" The thorns and petals branched out wildly; a veritable Ft. Worth of shrubbery, but the aqua-haired beauty was determined to reach the Wise Woman within. If there was a 'within,' of course. In these stories, the crumb-laden paths never ended. Not really.

She was carrying her offering; a lock of thick rose-petal-pink hair, tucked neatly into a covered basket. No one went to the Wise Woman without an offering and made it back unscathed. She thought fleetingly of little Kaoru Miki and his paralyzing preoccupation with some indescribable 'shining thing.' She wasn't going to end up like the others; she was to be Queen, after all! Ohtori Kanae may not have been a strong woman, but she would never be called a stupid one.

"Hey, little girl," a thick, testosterone-heavy purr came from behind one bush.

Kanae turned back, her cascading mint-green hair tumbling down as any good princess' does in these tales. "Hey, yeah?" came the callback.

Wolf strutted from the shadows as cockily as if he himself had put them there. Everyone knew—or so they thought—that it was the Wise Woman (the old Witch) that raised the thick branches to keep out unwelcome guests. Perhaps, thought Kanae, Wolf was cleverer than he seemed.

"What do you have there, Little One?" inquired the Wolf innocently.

"It's for the Witch," she replied, only slightly less innocent than the cocoa-skinned trespasser before her.

His bright green eyes seemed to glow even more brightly for the millisecond before he corrected Kanae lightly. "Wise Woman. Only fools refer to her as a Wi—_that_ word." His purr lost composure for only a brief moment, but Kanae was quite sure from that moment alone that Wolf was no man to be trusted. She bid him farewell and hurried along on her way.

Well, as hurriedly as one can travel with briars and shrieking woodland creatures to scare any intruders back to where they came from. But finally, the frail girl reached her destination: a rather beaten-down looking cabin in a rather beaten-down clearing. Yet once she rapped her thin fist hard against the door, she realized the cabin only appeared fragile; it was, in fact, quite sturdy, and she had to pound even harder against the thick wood to make even the slightest impression on whatever waited within.

"Enter," came a cool, low voice. And with that, the door swung wide open—though for all the briars and bushes about the cabin, no light illuminated the pressing dark. For the first time since she had been motivated to seek out the Wit…Wise Woman for aid, since she had snuck into the Prince's chambers to covertly chop the lock of hair free, since she entered the thick woods…she was genuinely frightened. Her pulse beat from every pore, and her heart seemed to be waiting to burst free from her esophagus.

"Ohtori Kanae," the pale voice began, "I think you know quite well the answer to the question you've brought with you." Through the black, Kanae could make out the slight frame of the Wise Woman—could even see a very familiar color of warm, dark skin, and the flash of emerald eyes. "And what you've brought me?" She motioned casually to the weightless basket. Kanae fell clumsily to her knees, thrusting the basket before her shaking body.

"I apologize, Wise Woman," she cried.

"No need," said the woman quietly, though there was all the command in the world held in that thin voice. "I accept your offering, Kanae," she continued, with almost a faint familiarity contained in her tone.

The Wise Woman lit a small fire in a pot beside her, standing on what looked to be a makeshift altar. And with just as nonchalant a motion, she tossed the lock of hair from the basket into the flame. The pungent scent of burning hair—sickly sweet, decaying—filled the cabin. "That should answer your question, Kanae." Absolute. Unquestionable. Yet Kanae had to question it.

"I…don't understand."

"Princes," said the Wise Woman, "are useless if they cannot be tamed. But no true Prince would ever wish for such a fate, and so we must control them in our own, secret ways. You've met your prince once today; the question that remains is whether or not you can cage him as I have and always will cage mine." Kanae no more understood this speech than the previous, but this was where the tale was supposed to end. Neatly. Primly. A moral had been determined, the questions presumably solved. Kanae, however, was unimpressed.

"Still, you question my wisdom." The Wise Woman did not need voice given to Kanae's thoughts. "Come to me, child," she murmured in that same cool, thin voice. "I will teach you the rites women like us have learned since time's dawn." Kanae did not understand, but the hypnotic voice drew her closer, closer in until she was at the Wise Woman's warm breast. There was no heart-beat…but she chuckled to herself, thinking she should have known this all along—after all, there was no heart! She thought suddenly that she may have been safer with Wolf. But there was no longer any way out. She had brought the offering to the altar; now, she was to be initiated. As it has always been.

* * *


End file.
